What do you do, if you´re...

Ok, I don't have a wife or daughters like you, but to me what you describe as love sounds like a conditional, attaching love.

Can you describe me what you think love is?

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Very well put.
One can only describe what you think love is.
I will not allow myself to fall in that trap. Trying to think about love will instantly divert away from the truth of it, so it is pointless.
I do know how it feels, but trying to describe it to you will only deminish it.
I refuse to stain something so beautiful by talking about it.

I can however tell you what it isn't, and my love for my kids is definately not conditional, and not attaching. Perhaps it really is true that you can't imagine the feeling when your first child is born.

It really rocked my world, I can tell you that !

All of your posts have made sense so far, but this seems conflicting to me.

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Hm. I wonder if the impersonal character of love is reserved for parents...

Ok, an example.
There are different kinds of people in the world.
Where one person will freeze when he sees something traumatic, others will have the tendency to move into action without thinking it over.
Suppose that you see a child of about 4 years old crossing the street. A car approaches and he spots the child too late. You are within a distance where you might reach the child before the car does.
And for convenience sake, lets assume that you are one of those people that doesn't freeze up.
You feel this urge to move and right away you move, in time to pick up the kid and move it to the side. The car misses the child, but hits you in the leg.
At the moment the car hits your leg you realise that it was impossible for you to make in time, and while your shattered leg is pulling away from under you and you fly through the air...

Will at any time from the moment you spotted the danger, to the moment you are flying through the air, will at any time the thought cross your mind " tomorrow the newspapers will call me a hero " ?

I have absolutely no doubt that this will happen, and I will gladly give you a medal and three kisses, expecially if that child crossing the street is mine, and I also will have no doubt that even tho you will behave like "anyone would have done that" inside you will be proud, but that is not the point.
Sure there will be benefits, but a selfless act is done without thinking about the gain at the time of the act.

By saying that all actions are selfish, I meant that in the end there is a personal gain in everything you decide to do. It could be as subtle as "I don't want to appear a certain way to my peers, SO I do this seemingly unselfish task for them." It's not as rewarding to the ego as something more directly selfish, but the reward is there to motivate the action. It just doesn't make sense to me that you could function purposefully without an inner reason.

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I think that you are giving the ego ( which by the way doesn't exist ) waaaaaaay too much credit.
Don't make the mistake of calling all thoughts and feelings "ego".
Ego is a misplaced belief in the person that your thoughts tell you to be.
Nothing more. Ego is not your thoughts. Thoughts are thoughts.
If you stop believing that you are that person, that doesn't mean that all thoughts will stop !

Thank goodness no, thoughts are needed to function in this world. When you take the stinger out of the "I" by not associating yourself with that make-believe person, the thoughts still come up, but now you choose what thoughts to focus on, what thoughts need to be acted on.
As long as you still believe that the " I " thought is who you are, you have no choice but to react to every thought that comes up. After all, you are thinking it right ?

How could you stain the truth by talking about it? It doesn't change what it is. Words are there only to point to concepts referring to what is, we both know this.

What I think I was trying to point is that true loving is love that doesnt prefer one over another.

Do you love your wife more than a beggar you see on the street? If so, why?

If you by accident squish an ant, would you feel towards this death as you would towards the accidental death of a loved one?

The realization that mind/ego is nothing more than a concept in the brain, like say, a cat, made me chuckle Thank you.

To your example of the car and the child, I would say save the child because you probably couldn't live with yourself if you knew you could've saved the kid but didn't act on it. But then again, I speak out of speculation.

Do you think of selfishness as something bad, even evil? What if, in an action, 10% of selfishness made it possible to be 90% unselfish? Wouldn't that make selfishness a positive force to begin with?

Do you think of selfishness as something bad, even evil? What if, in an action, 10% of selfishness made it possible to be 90% unselfish? Wouldn't that make selfishness a positive force to begin with?

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To act for the benefit of the greater good at the expense of a few is not truth. Truth is acting with the benefit of all in mind in every action we do. Letting the mind consider that acting at the expense of a few is not a true act.

How could you stain the truth by talking about it? It doesn't change what it is. Words are there only to point to concepts referring to what is, we both know this.

What I think I was trying to point is that true loving is love that doesnt prefer one over another.

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I would say that true love prefers the other before yourself.
That is true selflessness.

Do you love your wife more than a beggar you see on the street? If so, why?

If you by accident squish an ant, would you feel towards this death as you would towards the accidental death of a loved one?

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What's the point you are trying to make ? If love itself discriminates ?

The realization that mind/ego is nothing more than a concept in the brain, like say, a cat, made me chuckle Thank you.

To your example of the car and the child, I would say save the child because you probably couldn't live with yourself if you knew you could've saved the kid but didn't act on it. But then again, I speak out of speculation.

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I seriously doubt that you have time to think about that. If you would think about that, you would probably be too late to save the child.
This is something that I learned from Jiu-Jitsu. When I kept thinking about what my Uke ( training-partner ) might do next, I kept getting hit in the face.
When I stopped thinking about it and just reacted mindlessly, I was in time.
It wasn't the beautifull moves you see in Kung-Fu movies, but effective none the less.

Do you think of selfishness as something bad, even evil? What if, in an action, 10% of selfishness made it possible to be 90% unselfish? Wouldn't that make selfishness a positive force to begin with?

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You are trying to prove that selflessness doesn't exist, I don't have to prove that I think otherwise.

I guess what we call true love is something which everyone feels, if its shared. The one giving and the one receiving melt together in what they share. Here´s a quote from a NDE, i guess the love the guy felt has also been felt from the higher beeing, and i believe that love wasnt selfish, still you benefit from sharing it.

After breaking my left femur twice, smashing both my knees and breaking both bones in my left forearm, my head crushed my left hand (bruised for months) against the dash and my spirit flung out as if I was tossed, landing on my feet and then stopping against an amazing spirit. The top of my head was at the middle of his chest. He was warrior yet father-like. Only an outline as if the light was behind him. The love was immense (as if a child being thrown against his father for the first time). I was angry not only due to the fact I just put up the fight of my life and failed, but because I already knew everyone else was dead and actually had to push myself back (when all I wanted to do was stay and listen but had a body inside a burning car to tend to). So I grabbed the spirit's chest with both my hands (forearms raised against his chest) and said "I'm not F'n done yet" while telepathically reasoning why I just spoke like that and what I'm committing to for my return with a caveat to return back if I fail. As if my mind was acting as a representative of my spirit (3rd party). Then that unmistaken coil-back into my own body as if the spirit's back slammed against the inside of my body's back (like traveling so far so fast yet thru such a thin veil).

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STILL, I HAVE NOT FOUND HUMANLY WORDS TO TEL OF IT. THERE JUST AREN'T WORDS. LIGHT? OH, IT WAS MORE, BIGGER, PROFOUNDLY MORE, THAN JUST LIGHT. IT WAS SO VAST! SHIMMERING, A CLOUD OF WARM, LOVE. IT WAS AS IF I WAS IN LOVE WITH THE WHOLE WORLD, AND EVERYONE LOVED ME BACK! IT WAS SUCH A GLORIOUS FEELING, THAT I DID NOT WANT TO RETURN. NO PAIN, NO NEGATIVE IN ANYWAY.

Panthau, thanks for sharing that amazing quotation. I was so taken with it that I Googled it, found the Near Death Experience Research Foundation site, and bookmarked it. I look forward to reading more. Thanks again. m

True love is a natural part of awareness. It is what it is, simple and pure. Once there, when you are just present and without thought, even for a second, suddenly you’ll notice how happy you are, how peaceful you are, how much love you feel and there will be no reason for it. You will see that this love comes from you, only then will you understand and be able to give love. Love is selfless because it comes from awareness. Once you understand that there is no grasping at love, it will permeate from you and all will know.

Whenever I'm very in the moment, hanging out with a bunch of people, or with my family, or whatever, I'll do things for the benefit of other people. In the moment, I just do these things, only later do I think about how I was only thinking about them, or how good it felt to me.

The mind can definitely get involved in seemingly selfish tasks, but in those moments of life where you are feeling the flow of life, many things happen so easily, so intelligently, so flawlessly without you even realizing it until later.

Pure selflessness exists, when you take yourself out of the equation. And this happens when one is totally absorbed in the moment (which is not a rare, or hard thing to come by)

I wish I knew... These days, I am hardly motivated to meditate. I am just too busy with life and when I go to sleep, I feel too tired to meditate, but there was a time I used to meditate almost everyday, and what motivated me back then? I think it was desperation for change. I needed some positive change in life and that's why I meditated.

I guess thats the reason for most of us. If you ever touch that spiritual connection within, your desire grows... and then motivation isnt a problem anymore. Until then, just do what your heart tells you

Maybe remember what Abraham Lincoln once said " “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my axe”

Michael describes the importance of taking just a little time out for yourself in the free "Discover Meditation" course when he talks about the tree feller. It's so true and I do understand how busy life is, however, I have found over and over again how much more productive (and sane) I can be even if I only make 5/10 minutes for me.

Love is selfless. It doesn't come from the selfish "I", it is covered up by it !

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I'd have answered earlier, but I seem to have missed your post :O

Yes, it does resonate with me. I believe true love means pure awareness, and the actions arising from that awareness. This means that the actions arise from the needs of the situation and not the needs of the person.

With that said, I understand selflessness as a concept. But I just can't seem to wrap my mind around it. Maybe it's one of those things... incomprehendable to the mind. God?

I was sitting in the sauna, trying to meditate... and it just came to me not to trust the mind, as the needs and wants of the mind are always conditioned by the past.. reflections of some undealt emotional happening, perhaps. So that seems to leave me with.. God. The unknown. Faith. Whatever

I was sitting in the sauna, trying to meditate... and it just came to me not to trust the mind, as the needs and wants of the mind are always conditioned by the past.. reflections of some undealt emotional happening, perhaps. So that seems to leave me with.. God. The unknown. Faith. Whatever